Change management paper

· Early part of 20th century, next major management figure = Frederick Taylor. His perspective was called Scientific Management. Didn’t appear to care about people and was not liked. He looked at what organizations were like and identified problems that needed to be solved (started with problem-solving orientation).

· Workplace is screwed up in 3 ways and he knew how to fix it:

· Systematic soldiering – people only work as hard as the team works, they don’t listen to management but look to each other– we do what everybody else does, e.g., what are the norms.

· Uneven labor – some people work harder than others. High, medium, and low performers – don’t get the same amount of work out of everyone

· Physical ailments and health issues on the job – wanted to make the workplace healthier for employees. At the time, health issues were all physical – people doing manual labor (e.g., The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and the meatpacking industry)

· Scientific management – make the workplace scientific and rigorous. Three principles of scientific management:

· There is one best way to do everything – like Fayol’s routine idea. Taylor developed time and motion studies – break tasks into small units and time the duration of the units. After timing units, you don’t perform all of the units to see if they matter – eventually you come up with the most efficient way to do a job (e.g., movie = Office Space). What is it that you do and do you really need to be there to do it? We still have efficiency experts – and talk about best practices

· There should be proper selection and training of workers – that idea still exists today in HR. What should we be doing to hire people?

· Ability – only hire people who have the ability to do the task; have to identify key competencies. In a Tayloristic firm, if you don’t have the key competencies, you won’t get a shot.

· Compliance – employees have to be willing to comply. Looking at a book Taylor wrote, Mike found a vignette about steel mills that was patronizing to the new employee straight off the boat (as if they were simple). Taylor actually did do some good – instituted better ways of getting things done despite the demeaning

· There is an inherent difference between labor and management -- Taylor believed that if you were hired in as management, you could move up; if you were hired in as labor, you could never go any higher. Only way to get any money was to do what you were told to do . . .

· Managers think, plan and supervise

· Employees work

· Taylor’s outcomes – Taylor failed by 1930s (although his ideas stuck around). He bought a factory and instituted his principles. Within 2 years, they unionized, went on strike and he had to declare bankruptcy. He died an embittered man who thought he’d been doing good things by making things more efficient. He never understood why the whole system fell apart – people didn’t like being pigeonholed. Being in management sounds like more fun and interesting than being an employee. Laborers couldn’t move anywhere – and Taylor’s attitude was patronizing. Taylor’s legacy is still around today, we still screen people based on competencies, we still develop routines, and we still pay based on production – we just use different jargon

· Did take care of some health problems along with efficiency– in Bethlehem Steel, there had been huge issues with back problems from shoveling the coal – shoveling with the big heads on the shovels and then their backs hurt. Taylor said the problem was the head of the shovel – needed to be smaller. With smaller heads, the shovelers could put more coal in the ovens with less strain on their backs

· Started moving toward quantification of work – because Taylor was scientific, he wanted to quantify how much work everyone did (KPIs!!!!). This part created problems b/c Taylor believed labor unions would go away since he would tie everyone’s salaries to how much effort they had to put in and how much they actually produced (no need for collective bargaining). Thought you could create a formula for effort and production and correlate it to salary. Who makes the most money? Manual labor jobs. So women won’t make as much money in a Tayloristic factory (clerical positions didn’t make much money). Smaller men and disabled people were also disadvantaged.

· Next management expert was Mayo, Harvard professor – his approach was called Human Relations. In response to Taylor’s failure, Mayo developed his assumptions that we have alienated workers:

· Mayo’s assumptions:

· Meaning has gone out of work itself – routinization of work and Industrial Revolution (automating production). Since we can’t identify ourselves with the products, we have no pride of development. So why do we work if there’s no meaning?

· People work for social activity – we do it b/c we find contact with other people. The only reason we work is to find out who we are and to have contact with other people (e.g., movie Office Space).

· As a result, people are more responsive to the needs/forces of the workgroup than they are to the incentives provided by management – in the end, people will do what the workgroup does regardless of what you pay them (there’s apparently nothing at home and work is monotonous)

· Participation is the most important – you have to meet people’s social needs if you’re a manager.

· Human Relations training – learn to speak softly and sensitively to all employees, recognize their individual needs and potentialities (e.g., Office Space – syrupy and fake), going to ask you everyday how things are going. Train people in industry – industrial plan for how organizations should be structured

· Scanlan plan made more sense than Human Relations training– organize people into workgroups since individuals can’t get things done b/c the task is too big for a single individual. Organizational pyramid has overlapping workgroups – overlapping at single level of the organization. So a subset of workers are members of more than one team. At the second level, there will be a subset of the team that is member of the team above them – giving you interlocking groups to share ideas across groups. Scanlan plan had the idea of empowered groups – Mike hates the term empowerment due to the psychobabble. Some of the groups can be autonomous about how they can run their group apart from management – and can decide how to do the tasks themselves with some constraints (e.g., money = additional costs to company, can’t make changes if those changes have an impact on another team). In each of these teams, if you make an improvement that results in greater profitability, portion of incentives as a result will go directly to your team, e.g., more productive teams get more money coming back to them. Gives an incentive to be creative and work effectively with the people on your team = built-in incentive program. But the Scanlan plan didn’t work.

· Why didn’t Mayo work? Some of his assumptions weren’t true:

· Everyone doesn’t get along together – in a classic failure, bought a factory in a small, ethnically diverse town in NE. Town was segregated ethnically and people didn’t like each other, vying for political power. When he put these people in workgroups, he deliberately put the different ethnic groups together and they didn’t get along at all, whole thing exploded.

· Not all work teams had people who were motivated and capable – reality is that some people aren’t that motivated or capable. So when you put them in a workgroup, it doesn’t work

· Causal model – if people participate, there may not be an impact on their morale which may not increase productivity. Employees seldom get to participate in decisions that they really care about.

· Fiedler – Contingency Theory – not one size fits all. Personality determines the type of manager you’re going to be. Just as I can’t change your personality, I can’t change your leadership style. Consultants dislike this theory the most b/c they want to change you. People are what they are. In terms of personality, key component is ability to differentiate among people and skills. Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) Questionnaire – identify person you’d least like to work with and rate them. Some people regardless of their work group see big differences between least and most preferred coworkers – key idea is that it’s a stable trait (also applicable in church, friends) – you discriminate between how competent people are. You have to fit the right person to the right situation.

· Types of leaders

· Directive leaders – see big differences in competencies. They go after the incompetent people. Conditions where it’s good to be directive

· Permissive leaders – think everyone is competent and can’t be directive.

· Key variable is leader control – varies from little to moderate to high. Determine control by 3 dimensions:

· How much control over incentives does the leader have? Low control = few incentives; high control = high ability to disperse incentives

· How structured is the task? Low control = little structure; high control = highly structured

· How well do they like the boss? Low control = dislike the boss; high control = like the boss

· Right people in right situations:

· Low control = directive leader b/c someone has to take charge even without power (start-ups, just forming groups = chaos)

· Moderate control = permissive leader b/c there’s enough there to work from (more mature organization not suffering from chaos)

· High control = directive leader who has total control, when everything is going well, you want someone to keep it going, keep the well-oiled machine going ahead

· Job stability – not great since you can’t be retrained when you no longer fit the needs of the company. Need to bring in people who can adapt

#             Leader-Member Rel.             Task structure         Position- power             Most Effective

1             Good                                        Structured            Strong                             Low LPC

2             Good                                       Structured             Weak                              Low LPC

3             Good                                       Unstructured          Strong                              Low LPC

4             Good                                       Unstructured          Weak                               High LPC

5             Poor                                       Structured              Strong                             High LPC

6             Poor                                      Structured                 Weak                              High LPC

7             Poor                                     Unstructured          Strong                                 High LPC

8             Poor                                  Unstructured            Weak                                    Low LPC

 

 

· Situational Leadership Theory version 1– key is that the leader style needs to fit the experience level of the employee. Somewhat similar to contingency theory but only focuses on adaptation.. Range of experience from Low to Moderate to High experience (how long the employees have been doing their jobs). Never been as popular as contingency theory

Low Experience	Moderate Experience	High Experience
Directive model – take control (because it’s a low control situation)	Selling model – based on persuasion that my way is the best way to do it	Participation model (requires meetings to have everyone get together to discuss everything)	Delegation model = decentralization (you can try this on your own without my interference)

The SLII Model

The Situational Leadership II (or SLII model) According to the revised version of the theory, effective leaders must base their behavior on the developmental level of group members for specific tasks. The developmental level is determined by each individual's level of competence and commitment.

Enthusiastic Beginner (D1): High commitment, low competence.

Disillusioned Learner (D2): Some competence, but setbacks have led to low commitment.

Capable but Cautious Performer (D3): Competence is growing, but level of commitment varies.

Self-Reliant Achiever (D4): High competence and commitment.

SLII also suggests that effective leadership is dependent upon two key behaviors: supporting and directing. Directing behaviors include giving specific directions and instructions and attempting to control the behavior of group members. Supporting behaviors include actions such as encouraging subordinates, listening, and offering recognition and feedback.

The theory identifies four basic leadership styles.

Directing (S1): High on directing behaviors, low on supporting behaviors.

Coaching (S2): High on both directing and supporting behaviors.

Supporting (S3): Low on directing behavior and high on supporting behaviors.

Delegating (S4): Low on both directing and supporting behaviors.

The main point of SLII theory is that not one of these four leadership styles is best. Instead, an effective leader will match his or her behavior to the developmental skill of each subordinate for the task at hand.

Important Situational Factors

Experts suggest that there are four key contextual factors that leaders must be aware of when making an assessment of the situation.

First, leaders need to consider the relationship between the leaders and the members of the group. Social and interpersonal factors can play a role in determining which approach is best. For example, a group that lacks efficiency and productivity might benefit from a style that emphasizes order, rules, and clearly defined roles. A productive group of highly skilled workers, on the other hand, might benefit from a more  democratic style  that allows group members to work independently and have input in organizational decisions.

Second, the leader needs to consider the task itself. Tasks can range from simple to complex, but the leaders needs to have a clear idea of exactly what the task entails in order to determine if it has been successfully and competently accomplished.

Third, the level of authority the leader has over group members should also be considered. Some leaders have power conferred by the position itself, such as the capacity to fire, hire, reward, or reprimand subordinates. Other leaders gain power through their relationships with group members, often by gaining respect from group members, offering support to employees, and helping workers feel included in the decision-making process.

Finally, as the Hershey-Blanchard model suggests, leaders need to consider the level of maturity of each individual group member. Maturity level is a measure of both an individual's ability to complete a task as well as their willingness to complete the task. Assigning a job to a member who is willing but lacks the ability is a recipe for failure.

 

· Leader-Member Exchange Quality (LMX) – adds to situational leadership theory. Secret to being effective leader is having an approach that fits the employees (a little like ASA theory). Leaders have to have characteristics that fit the employees.

· When do you know you have an LMX, e.g., the quality is there?

· Positive affect – employees and boss like each other

· Respect – think each other is competent

· Contribution – positive relationship if both sides are willing to work hard to help each other

· Loyalty – if both sides are loyal to each other, willing to stand up for each other

· What creates a good LMX relationship?

· Similarity – not superficial similarity (e.g., race or gender) but it is attitudinal similarity – we like people who think like us

· Extroverted – they like to talk to each other

· Competency – the more competent you are, the more likely you are that the boss will bond with you

· Impression management – how employees talk to the boss. Study of 3 types of impression management strategies

· Job-focused strategy – telling the boss how good a job you’re doing. Doesn’t work – bosses find that annoying

· Self-focused strategy – try to convince the boss that you’re a good, friendly person. Doesn’t work either.

· Supervisor focused strategy – talking to the boss about things that are interesting to the boss. This works – so find something about your boss with which to connect. Mediated by similarity – every job includes an in group and an out group – and people go back and forth between the two as a function of who they bring in. Being in the in group is a hassle. Being in the out group, if something goes wrong, it’s not your fault b/c you didn’t help make the decision.

· What are the benefits of being in a good LMX relationship/in the in group

· Information – you learn about new information in advance, can’t do anything about it but sometimes knowing about it in advance is helpful (can lord it over other people)

· More interesting and challenging jobs – boss will give you better jobs b/c he/she thinks you’re like him

· Less supervision – boss will delegate and not supervise as closely

· Money – does it show up in your paycheck? Not really. Study that looked at kind of employee and the type of evaluation you would get from your boss based on quantifiable productivity. Does the boss evaluate you better b/c you have a good r’ship with him or her?

	New hires	Older workers
Low LMX (bad r’ship with boss and in the out-group)	Just what they deserve – fair evaluation	More than they deserve (??)
High LMX (good r’ship with boss and in the in-group)	More than they deserve	More than they deserve

Older workers get more since they’re high producers – the people who will survive best not getting along with the boss are the ones who are really productive

· What are the benefits of good LMX relationships to the organization?

· Higher productivity

· Do more OCB

Two new related approaches

· Bass = Charismatic Management/Leadership – most effective managers are charismatic. People aren’t drawn to people who aren’t charismatic.

What is a charismatic leader?

· Articulate a vision – creating visions is big right now. Here’s where we want to go – beautiful future. (Look up vision in the dictionary, e.g., suffer from visions)

· Sensitive to environmental constraints If I’m going to be charismatic, I have to be pragmatic about current restraints – not just rosy vision

· Engage in unconventional behavior – they’re nuts, they look different and don’t fit standard conventions

· Believe in personal risk –

· Sensitive to employee needs – they’re willing to say “this change is going to be tough but I’m telling you my vision will work”. Most leaders are in denial of how bad the changes will be

· Not committed to the status quo – I’m for change, I’m not committed to keeping things the way they are.

· Do all the characteristics matter? Three are most important = highest correlation with good things

· Sensitive to environmental constraints = highest correlation with things going well

· Vision – have to be able to articulate a vision. (Pete Townsend “we won’t be fooled again” – yes, we will)

· Sensitive to employee needs – aware of pain this will cause

· This managerial theory is readymade for communication – getting the troops to support the vision. Some research out there that says it works – that people who are charismatic can get people to work hard, creating productivity and loyalty.

· Limits of charismatic model

· Dependency – people who are charismatic leaders make us dependent on them and we become less creative and innovative (less thinking for ourselves). Big problem when charismatic leaders die . . . there’s no one left

· Attribution – charisma is an attributed phenomena, it’s not in the individual. Study on who we attribute charisma – we attribute charisma to leaders who survive a crisis. Some people think that some presidents have artificially constructed crises that they can survive – e.g., Bush’s approval rating before and after 9/11 (low to high) and Margaret Thatcher who was going to be voted out but then Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands (nothing there but Brit ex-patriate pirates and sheep); to restore the dignity of the Empire, she sent the British navy to retake the Falkland Islands and sent one of the queen’s sons (Andrew)

· Transformational Leadership –Secret to being an effective manager is to transform the employees. Theory starts with assumption that most employees are more interested in themselves and must be transformed into caring for the organization.

· Transformational leaders have 3 characteristics:

· Charismatic – related to Charismatic Leadership

· Provide intellectual stimulation – challenge us to think in ways we’ve never thought before (e.g., thinking out of the box)

· Individualized consideration – coach you, recognize you, individualized attention. Some CEOs can do this . . . can remember names, faces, and stories

· Compare transformation leaders to traditional leaders – in general, transformational leaders are more effective than traditional leaders

Traditional/Transactional Leaders	Transformational Leaders
· Management based on contingent rewards (i.e., money – if you work hard, you get more) · Management by exception – only pay attention to people who are different from the norm (e.g., superstars and screw ups) and the people in the middle get no attention at all	· Charismatic · Provide intellectual stimulation · Individualized consideration · More effective with the people in the middle

· Recent study – looked at most effective way of motivating employees in a for-profit business, a governmental organizational (not profit), and a not-for-profit NGO

· For-profit organization – traditional leaders were most effective; to be traditional you have to have money

· Government – transformational leaders were most effective; don’t have much money to give employees

· NGO – transformational leaders were most effective; has no money to give employees, all voluntary so the kinder/gentler management style is better

Power is a very bad thing.

I. Power attracts people who are narcissistic and have a high need for power.

II. Power also attracts people who see it as opportunity rather than responsibility.

III. Power transforms people after they acquire it. Even the good can become bad.

A. Approach tendency theory. People with power are action oriented, have gain frames and are overconfident (risk takers). People without power want to delay action, have loss frames and are less confident of success.

B. Situational focus theory. People with power are abstract thinkers who are not grounded in reality. They tend not to think about implementation.

C. Social distance theory. People with power do not solicit the advice nor do they listen to others who have less power. They only talk to others who have power. They tend to objectify others and view them as things to be manipulated.

IV. Research is trying to figure how to tame power.

A. Term limits.

B. Restricted domains of power.

C. Focus them on what leaders should do not what they actually do.